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Word of the Week minute — the 60th part of an hour; 60 seconds
Newspaper Knowledge Write an editorial stating why you believe the United States should or should not change to the metric system.
Did You Know? The official spelling is Daylight “Saving” Time, not Daylight “SavingS” Time. Saving is used here as a verbal adjective (a participle). It modifies time and tells us more about its nature; namely, that it is characterized by the activity of saving daylight. It is a saving daylight kind of time. Because of this, it would be more accurate to refer to DST as daylight-saving time. Similar examples would be a mind-expanding book or a man-eating tiger. Saving is used in the same way as saving a ball game, rather than as a savings account. Nevertheless, many people feel the word savings (with an 's') flows more mellifluously off the tongue. Daylight Saving Time also is in common usage, and can be found in dictionaries. Adding to the confusion is that the phrase Daylight Saving Time is inaccurate, since no daylight is actually saved. Daylight Shifting Time would be better, and Daylight Time Shifting more accurate, but neither is politically desirable.
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What Is Daylight Saving Time? People in some parts of the world gain an extra hour in winters and are able to sleep and snore that much longer thanks to a suggestion by Benjamin Franklin about Daylight Saving Time. But when the suggestion was first made, it raised such a furor not only from those kept awake by the extra snoring, but also from others and they wasted a lot of time fighting over this extra hour. Actually the confusion began when the postal service and the railways began to connect far-flung cities. These towns followed their town clock by measuring the position of the sun. Therefore, every city was on a slightly different time. In 1784, Benjamin Franklin, who was U.S. ambassador to France then, suggested the Daylight Saving Time concept but he was ignored. However, the railways decided to standardise time and Britain was the first to adapt a single consistent time across the country. But, this did nothing to ease international travel. In 1884, a Canadian railway engineer Sir Sanford Fleming suggested that the entire world be divided into time zones that would be calculated from a prime meridian. This would help calculate various time zones relative to that one. In October 1884, the International Meridian Conference met in Washington, D.C. and chose Greenwich, a village just outside London in England as the prime meridian. Though this Greenwich Meridian Time (GMT) was approved and adopted by the world, the various time zones across the world caused longer daylight hours in summer and shorter daylight hours in winter in certain countries. So in 1907, a Londoner called William Willett tried to revive the subject of Daylight Saving Time. Unfortunately, he got laughed at. It was the practical Germans who realized that such a scheme helped reduce energy costs in lighting and electricity and immediately implemented it. But why would you want to save daylight time at all? Adopting the Daylight Saving Time (DST) scheme saves ener-
gy. Energy used and the demand for electricity for lighting our homes is directly connected to when we go to bed and when we get up. Studies show that sunrise in the summer is very early and most people wake up after the sun rises. Because the sun is up, we don't need to turn on lights in our homes. Thus, we actually use less energy in the morning. The opposite works in winter. With DST, the “spring forward and fall (autumn) backward” system comes into play. In summer, the clock is extended by an hour and the sun therefore “sets” one hour later. This means that less electricity would be used for lighting and appliances later in the day. In autumn and winters, the clock is set an hour backward as more light is needed in the morning. However, there was opposition as people did not like the idea of getting up an hour early or going to bed an hour later, just to keep up with the Joneses in some far off village in Greenwich. Others complained of the inconvenience of changing all the clocks, and adjusting to a new sleeping schedule. For most people, this is a mere nuisance, but for some people with sleep disorders this transition is very difficult. But in 1916, a year after Willett died, Britain and USA adapted DST. Other countries followed suit. The motivation was to conserve coal during World War I.
Clocks were put one hour ahead of GMT during the summer months. But in 1918, the law was repealed in the United States. Two decades later during World War II, DST was re-introduced to help the war effort and clocks were put two hours ahead of GMT during summer! This became known as Double Summer Time. From 1945 to 1962, DST became quite inconsistent with a hodgepodge of time observances and no agreement when to change clocks. Countries were free to observe or not observe DST. This caused confusion no end – especially for the broadcasting industry, for the postal service, railways and airlines. In 1966, the United States Congress introduced the Uniform Time Act to regulate DST across the country. Today, approximately 70 countries utilize DST. While Europe has been taking advantage of the time change for decades, in 1996 the European Union (or EU) standardized a EU-wide “summertime period.” The EU is the union of all European countries into one economic entity, though they differ politically. However, some countries like those in the equatorial and tropical regions do not observer DST as daylight hours are similar through the year and there is no advantage in moving clocks backward and forward.
United States
Year 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
DST Begins at 2 a.m. March 8 March 14 March 13 March 11 March 10 March 9 March 8 March 13
DST Ends at 2 a.m. November 1 November 7 November 6 November 4 November 3 November 2 November 1 November 6
European Union Summertime Summertime period begins period ends at 1 a.m. UT at 1 a.m. UT March 29 October 25 March 28 October 31 March 27 October 30 March 25 October 28 March 31 October 27 March 30 October 26 March 29 October 25 March 27 October 30
US calculator valid 1976-2099; EU 1996-2099.
See if you can find and circle the words listed. They are hidden in the puzzle vertically, horizontally and diagonally — some are even spelled backwards.
Oil Conservation Following the 1973 oil embargo, the U.S. Congress extended Daylight Saving Time to eight months, rather than the normal six months. During that time, the U.S. Department of Transportation found that observing Daylight Saving Time in March and April saved the equivalent in energy of 10,000 barrels of oil each day – a total of 600,000 barrels in each of those two years. Likewise, in 1986, Daylight Saving Time moved from the last Sunday in April to the first Sunday in April. No change was made to the ending date of the last Sunday in October. Adding the entire month of April to Daylight Saving Time is estimated to save the U.S. about 300,000 barrels of oil each year. Beginning in 2007, Daylight Saving Time commenced on the second Sunday in March and ended on the first Sunday in November, thereby saving even more oil.
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